Journal article
Comprehensively accounting for the effect of giant CCN in cloud activation parameterizations
- Abstract:
- Large cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) (e.g., aged dust particles and seasalt) cannot attain their equilibrium size during the typical timescale of cloud droplet activation. Cloud activation parameterizations applied to aerosol with a large fraction of large CCN often do not account for this limitation adequately and can give biased predictions of cloud droplet number concentrations (CDNC). Here we present a simple approach to address this problem that can easily be incorporated into cloud activation parameterizations. This method is demonstrated with activation parameterizations based on the "population splitting" concept of Nenes and Seinfeld (2003); it is shown that accounting for large CCN effects eliminates a positive bias in CDNC where the aerosol dry geometric diameter is greater than 0.5 μm. The method proposed here can also be extended to include the water vapour depletion from pre-existing droplets and ice crystals in global and regional atmospheric models.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
- Publisher:
- Copernicus Publications
- Journal:
- Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 10
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 2467-2473
- Publication date:
- 2010-03-01
- Edition:
- Publisher's version
- EISSN:
-
1680-7324
- ISSN:
-
1680-7316
- Language:
-
English
- Subjects:
- UUID:
-
uuid:6d5bc085-2851-470e-89bf-74e01f294783
- Local pid:
-
ora:3555
- Deposit date:
-
2010-03-23
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- D Barahona et al
- Copyright date:
- 2010
- Notes:
- Citation: Barahona, D. et al. (2010). 'Comprehensively accounting for the effect of giant CCN in cloud activation parameterizations', Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 10(5), 2467-2473. [Available at http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/2467/2010/]. © Authors 2010. This work is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). This permits the copying, distribution, transmission and adaption of the work, provided the original authors are credited. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. These conditions may be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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